Naked truths in Hollywood costume designer Orry-Kelly’s memoir

Orry-Kelly’s Hollywood tales are enjoyable, but the most vividly recalled sections relate to his time in Sydney.

A life of sizing up the stars

The story behind Orry-Kelly’s memoir Women I’ve Undressed is nearly as good as the stories inside it. Kept by his niece in a pillowslip, the manuscript was long rumoured to exist before it came unexpectedly to light during the making of Gillian Armstrong’s recent documentary about the boy from Kiama, NSW, who became one of Hollywood’s finest costume designers.

Noting in his introduction that ‘‘Hollywood dislikes naked truths’’, Orry-Kelly dishes up plenty. Some glittering reputations were protected for half a century by that pillowslip, not least that of Orry-Kelly’s one time lover, a vaudeville performer named Archie Leach, who, in this account, treated him rather shabbily after he became the movie star Cary Grant.

Born in 1897, Orry Kelly (Hollywood added the hyphen) began his career at the age of six or seven, designing scenery for a toy theatre and creating costumes out of coloured silk from a Lady’s Companion he had demanded for Christmas.

Kelly’s father, a tailor, either wouldn’t or couldn’t see the story unfolding before his eyes. Coming inside one day after gardening, he ‘‘said something to me about a boy, seven years old, playing with dolls. He broke the cardboard figures and kicked the Lady’s Companion to smithereens. Taking me outside, he put a huge wheelbarrow in my hands and ordered me to go to the Point and fetch manure for his garden.’’

Thereafter, except for a brief and ludicrous stint in the US Army, Orry-Kelly was nobody’s shitkicker. He made it to the top by sheer professionalism and talent: the filmography at the end of the book lists an extraordinary 295 credits as costume designer, including three for which he won an Oscar. In 1934 he received 56 credits, more than a movie a week. His salary as Warner Bros chief designer was eye-watering.

He writes with deep affection about many of the female stars he dressed: Bette Davis, Ethel Barrymore, Barbara Stanwyck and Bebe Daniels, to name a handful. But woe betide those, such as Joan Fontaine, who behaved badly.

After Fontaine was heard complaining to studio boss Sam Goldwyn that Orry-Kelly was never around on the set when he was wanted (by her), the designer ‘‘sent a message to the set by her wardrobe girl, telling Miss Fontaine that I was too old, too tired and too successful to fetch and carry for her on the set. Naturally, I never dressed her again.’’

Contrasting Fontaine with her sister Olivia de Havilland, Orry-Kelly writes archly: ‘‘What a difference … they were direct opposites. Olivia was kind, considerate, sincere, loyal and full of charm. I dressed Miss Fontaine as the young girl in The Constant Nymph. On screen she was charming.”

Another star he fell out with was Marilyn Monroe. Hired by Billy Wilder to do the costumes for Some Like It Hot, Orry-Kelly claims to have been ‘‘shocked’’ by how much weight Monroe had put on. He wanted to use fabrics — ‘‘shiny satin on her top shelf and dull crepe on her bottom’’ — that would not make her look too heavy in comparison with her two cross-dressing male co-stars, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. True to her reputation for being difficult on set, Monroe arrived three hours late and was reprimanded the next day by Wilder. Orry-Kelly writes:

She blushed immediately. Temper, not temperament, took over. She pointed her finger at me and started babbling, ‘‘He said boys’ arses are smaller than girls’ arses and he said that Tony Curtis’s arse was smaller than mine, and I told that one’’ — pointing at me — ‘‘that some people like girls’ arses and some people like — ’’

The star who comes off worst is one Orry-Kelly was never paid to dress, but whose rise to fame and riches mirrored his own. Sailing to New York in 1921 after several years living hand-to-mouth in Sydney, Orry-Kelly was soon making good money selling hand-printed shawls and ties. One winter evening a stranger walked into the gated courtyard of his studio in Greenwich Village. His name was Archie Leach. ‘‘He was carrying a little two-foot-square shiny black tin box which held all his worldly possessions, and he was wearing a much shinier black suit. He had been locked out of his hall bedroom. I took him in.’’

In New York the often unemployed Leach helped him with his hand-printed ties while Orry-Kelly began painting the nightclub murals that became his calling card for the movies. Leach, meanwhile, became Cary Grant. In rough times the two relied on money sent from Australia by Orry-Kelly’s mother. Orry-Kelly says lent cash without thinking, but when the tables were turned, the successful Grant insisted on repayment down to the last cent.

During World War II, Orry-Kelly applied to join the US Army. At the aptitude test he was informed that his IQ ‘‘was the lowest out of 1700 men stationed at St Petersburg’’. The army took him anyway, and the man who had dressed Bette Davis and Rita Hayworth spent most of his war digging latrines. ‘‘My short stay in the regular army made me regain values,’’ he writes.

Grant cannily avoided service by schmoozing the British ambassador, Lord Lothian, and boasting about it. ‘‘I could see now that Grant had gone to the point of no return,’’ writes Orry-Kelly. His loss of respect for his former friend and lover strikes a rare note of regret in a book — and a life — in which he seems to have had few misgivings. There was a reconciliation of sorts: in 1964, Grant was one of the pallbearers at Orry-Kelly’s funeral.

In his introduction, Orry-Kelly insists he is ‘‘not particularly literary. The biggest dunce in my class, there was no one worse in English.’’ He may not have been literary, but he could certainly write. As befits the memoir of a great dresser, his book is beautifully designed and illustrated. The end papers are a treat.

There is much to enjoy in his Hollywood tales, but the book’s most deeply felt and vividly recalled sections relate to the streets of east Sydney and New York during and after the World War I, when the young Orry-Kelly was living by his wits, befriending prostitutes, gamblers and bootleggers (he briefly ran a speakeasy) while trying to find his way as an artist.

Gentleman George, with his ‘‘too light grey suit … black patent leather shoes with grey suede uppers and mother-of-pearl buttons’’, Minnie the Toad, Port Wine Pansy, Spanish Nell, Rosie Boot and the sly grogger Alice O’Grady fly off the early pages with an energy and conviction that none of the Hollywood stars in the later chapters can match. Orry-Kelly’s pen portraits bring the city and the period pungently to life:

The Two-Shilling Girl was standing with one foot on the pavement and the other foot on her doorstep. Her cheap, gaudy wrapover exposed the half moons of her irregular sagging breasts and emphasised the large button of her navel. She wore broken-down faded turquoise satin shoes with diamond buckles and rolled stockings. A drunk approached; she called out, ‘‘Ello, dearie, ’ows’s about comin’ in fer a good time?’’ He paused for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and staggered away.

Did Orry-Kelly really remember every detail of that scene, or had he spent too long in the movies? I’m not sure I care.

Tom Gilling is an author and critic.

Women I’ve Undressed

By Orry-Kelly

Ebury Press, 425pp, $39.99